1979-80 O-Pee-Chee Oilers Emblem Checklist #82

the card

notes

When the World Hockey Association folded and four of its clubs joined the NHL for 1979-80, O-Pee-Chee had a problem with three of them. The Edmonton Oilers, Winnipeg Jets and Hartford Whalers get no team photograph in this set. They get their logo on a plain front instead, with a checklist on the back. Card 82 is Edmonton's.

Quebec is the odd one out. The Nordiques appear as a standard team card at 261, in the run of team cards with the other seventeen clubs, while Jets, Oilers and Whalers sit out of sequence at 81, 82 and 163. Several references describe four emblem checklists rather than three; PSA's checklist lists three, and Quebec in the ordinary run.

What makes 82 collected rather than skipped is what is printed on the back. It is a team checklist, and the Edmonton roster it lists includes Wayne Gretzky. Sellers advertise it that way, and it is why a checklist card from a 396-card set has been graded 558 times when an ordinary common from the same set sits around fifty.

The population tells you something else, and it is worth reading carefully. This card has eleven PSA 10s. Gretzky's rookie, from the same set, printed on the same sheets, has two. That is not because the checklist survived better. It is because of who bothered to submit. Three per cent of graded Oilers checklists came back at PSA 3 or below. On the Gretzky it is thirty-one per cent, because a wrecked Gretzky is still worth grading and a wrecked checklist is not.

So the population of this card is a record of the good copies that people chose to pay to encapsulate. The population of card 18 is closer to a record of what actually survived. Two numbers from the same report, measuring different things.

population

PSA

graded elsewhere

recorded 29 aug 2026. figures are a snapshot on that date, not a live count.

recorded sales

dated past results, not an estimate of what a copy is worth today. figures published by an auction house normally include the buyer's premium, so they are more than the seller received.

where to buy one

Cheap raw, and worth being fussy about. This is a card where the difference between an ordinary copy and a good one is a few dollars, so there is no reason to settle.

Graded, PSA 8 is the sensible target: PSA has recorded 203, they are plentiful, and the card looks the way you remember it. PSA 9 at 55 is a real step up in scarcity without being a different market. The eleven PSA 10s are a registry item rather than a collector one.

If you want the card for the Gretzky connection rather than the Oilers, be clear with yourself about that before you pay a premium. It is a checklist with his name printed on the back, not a card of him.

what to check before you buy

Marked or unmarked. This is the whole game on a checklist card. Plenty of these were used as intended, with the boxes ticked in pen or pencil, and sellers label them "marked" or "unmarked" for exactly that reason. A marked copy is worth a fraction of a clean one, and PSA will note it rather than ignore it - twelve of the 558 graded carry a qualifier.

Ask for a photograph of the back. On any other card in this set the back is a formality. On this one it is the thing you are buying.

Check the blue border for chipping and check centering on both sides, the same as every card in this set.

Slightly rough edges are original. O-Pee-Chee cut its sheets with wires rather than blades, so furred edges are a characteristic of the production rather than a sign the card was handled badly - and a copy with genuinely sharp edges is worth a second look.

And check the copyright line: O-Pee-Chee says Printed in Canada. The 1979-80 Topps set runs to 264 cards and includes number 82, but the Topps version at this number is a different card - it is one of the five numbers where the two sets diverge, along with 81, 141, 163 and 263.

sources